The Berenstain Bears and the Real Easter Eggs: We Own It Because It Says Easter on the Front

We have this one in the collection probably because it had the word Easter on the front. When you're buying books for kids, you have your Halloween books and your Christmas books and your Valentine's books, and now we have this Easter book. Will we pull it out on Easter? Probably. But it's not one of the better ones and definitely one of the more forgettable ones in the collection.

Cubs want to do an Easter egg hunt, do the Easter egg hunt, and see something nice, and now all of a sudden decide they have a new appreciation for the holiday, I suppose.

This is definitely one of the longer Berenstain Bears books. That reading was about 10 minutes and 30 seconds. Definitely a lot of text, and unlike a lot of other Berenstain Bears books, there's a lot of filler, especially at the beginning.

A long runway to the egg hunt

We get the whole opening about Sister counting her Valentine's Day cards, and then Mama and a little of Papa getting preachy about that not being all these holidays are about. It's a pretty long opening. Then we get this weird transitionary part of the book during the wintertime, where they forget the holidays and go do things, with subtle undertones of spring is coming. That takes up about three full pages, a couple of minutes of reading, and there doesn't really seem to be a point there.

At least with my kids, I definitely would lose them during these parts, and I'd almost feel the need to skip over it. It's not necessarily bad writing. I see what they're trying to do. They're trying to put down this scene, especially given that the closing is going to be very much related to the new life from spring. But it almost seems like either they should have cold opened on this and skipped the whole Valentine's Day opening, or they should have scrapped the whole springtime theme and gone directly into Easter.

I know there are other Berenstain Bears Easter books. I think we have one of them in the collection that I'll get to review eventually, and I think that one is taking a different approach. Maybe this one came out afterwards and they're trying to re-tap into Easter with a slightly different spin on it to make it feel different.

When my kids read this book, really the two lasting images for them are probably the gigantic chocolate bunny that they could imagine themselves winning if they were to do an Easter egg contest like this, and then the cubs doing the Easter egg hunt, holding their baskets, with our kids immediately wanting to start looking for eggs themselves.

On the characters themselves, we get your pretty typical representations of all of them. You've got Sister, who gets over-enthusiastic and caught up in the presents and other materialistic aspects of holidays. Brother is more of a supporting character in this, following along with Sister's lead.

We definitely get the Mama preachiness, and I think she comes across a little judgy in this one. She outright says to Sister at a couple of points, you're wrong, that's not what these holidays are actually about. Then later, when Sister's trying to tell Mama about the Easter egg hunt, Mama is just entirely dismissive the whole time, ignoring her, trying to talk about spring.

We can see what she's doing. I think we've all used a similar parenting style, the ignoring and redirecting to the topic you'd like to talk about. But in this case she could easily just be like, oh, an Easter egg hunt, that sounds fun, let's talk to Papa about getting that on the schedule, and by the way, springtime springtime springtime type stuff. She's a little overbearing here.

Papa we get as well, typical Papa. Honestly, one of the highlights of the book for me is the image of Papa running around the corner with Brother, excited to tell Mama about the Easter egg hunt, thinking that he's going to get to do it.

We fall into that stupid Papa Bear trope a little here. Does he really actually believe that he's going to be able to do the Easter egg hunt, or is there some kind of show he's putting on to show enthusiasm and get the kids excited? I've definitely played that role as the dad before, just to be like, oh, do I get to do it too? That sounds super fun. It's playful, and the kids will be like, no, no, you can't do it, dad, this is for kids. So generally Papa's representation in here is pretty good. He likes his black jelly beans, a very parent thing to do, and the cubs give them to him at the end.

What's a kid supposed to walk away with?

They're definitely wanting to focus on appreciating the other aspects of holidays. It's a pretty typical thing for kids to just look forward to the yummy food on Thanksgiving or presents on Christmas or candy on Easter, and the overarching theme is to try to have them capture the other parts that the holidays are really meant for. I think it's off the mark though, because they're trying to focus on the wholesome aspect of the seasons, but the bigger theme is about spring and how spring brings new life. So the connection to Easter is a little soft.

Especially considering that Easter is a religious holiday; there's really no mention of that at all. It almost seems like they're trying to say that the whole point of Easter is springtime coming, or new life. It eventually closes on the baby birds hatching, and Brother and Sister seeing the new life there and having a whole new appreciation. But it doesn't really feel super connected to Easter, as opposed to the cubs just being less materialistic. I see where they're coming from. They're trying to thread the needle, not being too overtly religious or preachy, would be my guess.

Compared to some other Berenstain Bears books where the moral is more clear and there's a pretty clear resolution to it, this one seems off. The cubs just seem to have, out of nowhere, this new appreciation for springtime or new life, I guess. But it doesn't ever feel like they've come to a reckoning of, oh, holidays are about this and not necessarily about the candy. Mama is trying to show Sister what it's about with the crocuses coming up and the bush and stuff, but a kid's not going to land that message. It's a flower, whatever. She'd probably do better to teach the lesson more directly.

It's not a one out of five. There is some moral there that we as parents want kids to know, which is that there's more to holidays. Take Christmas, for instance: there's the religious aspect you can cover, or if you don't focus on that, there's also just that it's not just receiving, it's also giving. I think there's actually a Berenstain book on that, the Joy of Giving. This one, yes, it's a nice moral that there's more to a holiday. It's just, with the way it's done, and how the weird springtime piece is interwoven in, what is a kid going to walk away with as their lesson here? We'll get to the Berenstain books later that are probably going to find that one out of five rating.

About those eyes

This is one of the later books in the series that we have, and one of the trends I've noticed is they introduced a few new faces for the cubs. In particular, they have this new face where the eyes are heavy-lidded. I think what they're trying to do with these half-opened eyes is this feeling of warmth, wholesomeness, the recognition of something good. But it just doesn't look very good to me. When you look at those cubs' eyes, it almost looks like they're drugged out or something, this weird out-of-it look on their faces. There's an unappealingness to it, where if somebody were to give you those eyes you'd be a little creeped out.

They do this one a lot in this book. They do it when the cubs are seeing anything wholesome, especially when the baby birds are hatching, and we get it a little from Mama, giving her kind of an all-knowing look at the cubs. That's really where the Berenstain Bears shine sometimes, the really great facial expressions and how well they tell you a lot about what the cubs are thinking. It's doing that here, but it's not an appealing look, and it's not really a look you get from kids either. Maybe the type of look an adult would give, but not a child type of look.

We do get some nice images of candy, which is pretty typical through the Berenstain Bears books. Whenever they're illustrating candy, they always make it extremely appealing.

There are no other characters introduced here; we're just taken along with the typical background scenes. So the images are definitely not my favorite. There's nothing that stands out as, hey, this is stuff the kids love, or I love looking at it, or it's funny. There's the facial expressions that I don't like, and then some appealing images of candy.

Milquetoast, in the end

It's a milquetoast book. When it comes to the plot line, yes, it meanders, but for the most part it's pretty boring and dull. There's really nothing long lasting. I would almost read this book and immediately forget what it's about. My kids would probably immediately forget what it's about, and it's never one they're going to explicitly ask for.